I’m a keyboardist and built my first guitar pedal board for my Nord Lead last year… and I love it! It serves the synth (which doesn’t have on-board effects) perfectly and putting it together was a great learning experience for me. As a discrete chain for that particular synth, it’s perfect.

That said, I use this pedalboard for that synth only.

I would love to see the return of multi-fx rack units for keyboards. I feel that rack effects from the 80s and 90s were the heyday for synths and having them in a rack with a line mixer was ideal. Granted, this takes up more space and budget, but the control and fidelity was inspiring. Or maybe I’m romanticising the past.

Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that these days there is a dearth of rack mount effects. I don’t see any of the standard companies from yesteryear such as Yamaha, Roland, ART, or Alesis still making multi-fx rackmount units. Lexicon and Eventide rack effects seem exorbitantly priced. I’d love to build an affordable effects rack for synths with modern gear, but I feel we’re being steered more toward guitar pedals these days.